The EU Working Time Directive in detail

The EU Working Time Directive has faced fierce criticism for the restrictions
it places on employees and workers, with doctors warning that it is
hampering NHS. But how does the directive break down in detail?

Doctors have claimed the EU working time directive is hampering the NHSPhoto: CORBIS

TheEU Working Time Directive was introduced in 1993 to regulate the amount of time spent at work in order to protect the health and safety of the European workforce.

Provisions

A person's average working week must be no longer than 48 hours in seven days. Working time includes job-related training, travelling time and paid overtime, but excludes notmal travel to work, breaks when no work is done and voluntary unpaid overtime.

The 48-hour limit does not apply to those can choose freely how long they work, such as managing executives, those who work in the armed forces and emergency services, domestic servants in private houses or sea transport workers, mobile workers in inland waterways and lake transport workers on board sea-going fishing vessels.

Workers are entitled to a mininum rest period of 11 consecutive hours in every 24, as well as a rest break during working time if they are on duty for longer than six hours. They are also entitled to a minimum uninterrupted rest period of 24 hours in every seven days

Night workers are entitled to extra protection. Average working hours must not exceed 8 hours per 24-hour period and employees are entitled to free health assessments and, in some cases, a transfer to day work.

All employees must be given paid annual leave of at least four weeks per year.

Like all EU directives, the Working Time Directive is an instrument which requires all member states to enact its requirements in national law. Interpretations of the directive differ across Europe:in the UK it remains possible for workers to "opt out" of the 48-hour maximum working week while France passed stricter legislation limiting the maximum number of hours spent working each week to 35.

Case law

The SIMAP judgement by the European Court of Justice in 2000 defined all the time that the worker is required to be present on site as actual working hours for the purposes of work and rest calculations.

The Jaeger judgement in 2003 confirmed that the above should hold even if the worker is allowed to sleep when their services on site are not required.

The above clarifications have had a profound effect on workers who are required to be resident on site when on call - particularly junior doctors. A 2009report from the Royal College of Surgeons in England said that there were not enough surgeons to fill rotas if they worked only 48 hours a week, that 90 per cent of trainee doctors were exceeding their timetabled hours on a weekly basis and that 55 per cent reported being pressured to falsely declare their actual hours worked.